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Overview

I am a professor in the physics department studying particle physics and cosmology. I try to understand both the nature of the ghostly particles called neutrinos in giant detectors deep underground, and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating using telescopes on top of mountains. My background and training is originally in particle physics and I was part of the team that showed the sub-atomic particles called neutrinos have mass. The leader of our team, T. Kajita was co-awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery which cited the work of our collaboration. Recently, I started an effort in observational cosmology at Duke, joining the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project, a giant telescope that will be located in Chile designed to make a 10 year, three dimensional survey of the entire visible sky. In LSST, we will focus on examining billions of galaxies, along with supernovae and other astronomical probes to try to determine the nature of the mysterious “Dark Energy” which is unaccountably causing the universe to pushed apart at a faster and faster rate.